Doctor Fischer of Geneva Or The Bomb Party (14 page)

‘No. No.' He was hardly audible, but he didn't resist when I drew the cracker from his fingers.

‘What do you mean, Jones?'

I couldn't bother to answer Doctor Fischer – I was on more important business – and anyway I didn't know the answer. The answer hadn't been given me by whoever had given me the words.

‘Stop where you are, damn you. Tell me, what in Christ's name do you mean?'

I was far too happy to reply for I had the Divisionnaire's cracker in my fingers and I walked away from the table down the slope of the lawn towards the lake, the direction which I had imagined Anna-Luise taking. The Divisionnaire buried his face in his hands as I passed; the gardeners had gone, and the bonfires were dying. ‘Come back,' Doctor Fischer called after me, ‘come back, Jones. I want to talk to you.'

I thought: When it comes to the point he's afraid too. I suppose he wants to avoid a scandal. But I wasn't going to help him over that. This was a death which belonged to me, it was my child, my only child, and it was Anna-Luise's child too. No skiing accident could rob the two of us of the child I held in my hand. I wasn't lonely any longer – they were the lonely ones, the Divisionnaire and Doctor Fischer, sitting at opposite ends of the long table, waiting to hear the sound of my death.

I went down to the very edge of the lake, where the slope of the lawn would hide me from both of them, and for the third time, but this time with complete confidence, I took the tape between my teeth and pulled the cracker with my right hand.

The silly insignificant crack and the silence which followed told me how utterly I had been fooled. Doctor Fischer had stolen my death and humiliated the Divisionnaire; he had proved his point about the greed of his rich friends, and he was sitting at the table laughing at both of us. It had certainly been a good last party as far as he was concerned.

I couldn't hear his laughter at this distance. What I heard was the pad and the squeak of footsteps in the snow as they came along the edge of the lake. Whoever it was stopped abruptly when he saw me – all I could make out was a black suit against the white snow. I asked, ‘Who are you?'

‘Why, it's Mr Jones,' a voice said. ‘Surely it's Mr Jones.'

‘Yes.'

‘You've forgotten me. I'm Steiner.'

‘Why on earth are you here?'

‘I couldn't stand it any more.'

‘Stand what?'

‘What he did to her.'

At that moment my mind was occupied with Anna-Luise and I had no idea what he meant. Then I said, ‘There's nothing you can do about it now.'

He said, ‘I heard about your wife. I am very sorry. She was so like Anna. When I heard she had died it was just as though Anna had died all over again. You must forgive me. I am talking clumsily.'

‘No. I can understand what you felt.'

‘Where is he?'

‘If you mean Doctor Fischer, he's been playing his best and final joke and he's up there laughing to himself, I imagine.'

‘I've got to go and see him.'

What for?'

‘When I was in that hospital I had a lot of time to think. It was seeing your wife which made me start to think. Seeing her in the shop was like Anna come alive. I had too much accepted things – he was so powerful – he had invented Dentophil Bouquet – he was a bit like God Almighty – he could take away my job – he could even take away Mozart. I never wanted to listen to Mozart after she died. You must understand, please, for her sake. We were never really lovers, but he made innocence dirty. Now I want to get near enough to him to spit in God Almighty's face.'

‘It's a bit too late for that, isn't it?'

‘It's never too late to spit at God Almighty. He lasts for ever and ever, amen. And he made us what we are.'

‘Perhaps he did, but Doctor Fischer didn't.'

‘He made me what I am now.'

‘Oh,' I said – I was impatient with the little man who had broken my solitude – ‘go up there then and spit. A lot of good may it do you.'

He looked away from me up the slope of the lawn which we could barely distinguish now in the dying light of the fires, but as it happened Mr Steiner didn't have to climb up the slope to find Doctor Fischer, for Doctor Fischer came climbing down to us, climbing slowly and laboriously, watching his own feet, which sometimes slid on an icy patch.

‘Here he comes,' I said, ‘so you had better get your spit ready.'

We stood there waiting and it seemed an interminable time before he reached us. He stopped a few feet away and said to me, ‘I didn't know you were here. I thought by this time you had probably gone away. They've all gone away. The Divisionnaire's gone.'

‘With his cheque?'

‘Of course. With his cheque.' He peered through the dark at my companion. He said, ‘You're not alone. Who is this man?'

‘His name is Steiner.'

‘Steiner?' I had never before seen Doctor Fischer at a loss. It was as though he had left half his mind behind him at the table. He seemed to look towards me for help, but I gave him none.

‘Who's Steiner? What's he doing here? He had the air of searching a long time for something which he had mislaid, like a man turning over the objects in a cluttered drawer, seeking a cheque book or a passport.

‘I knew your wife,' Mr Steiner said. ‘You made Mr Kips dismiss me. You ruined both our lives.'

After he had spoken the three of us stood there, silent in the darkness and the snow. It was as though we were all waiting for something to happen, but not one of us knew what it would be: a jeer, a blow, a simple turning away. It was the moment for Mr Steiner to act, but he did nothing. Perhaps he knew his spit wouldn't carry far enough.

At last I said, ‘Your party was a great success.'

‘Yes?'

‘You managed to humiliate us all. What are you going to do next?'

‘I don't know.'

Again I had the impression that he was looking to me for help. He said, ‘There was something you said just now . . .' It was incredible, the great Doctor Fischer of Geneva, looking to Alfred Jones to help him remember – what?

‘How you must have laughed when I bought the last cracker, and you knew that all I would get was a little fart when I pulled it.'

He said, ‘I didn't mean to humiliate
you
.'

‘It was an extra dividend for you, wasn't it?'

He said, ‘I hadn't planned it that way. You are not one of them,' and he muttered their names: a sort of roll call of the Toads. ‘Kips, Deane, Mrs Montgomery, the Divisionnaire, Belmont, and there were those two who died.'

Mr Steiner said, ‘You killed your wife.'

‘I didn't kill her.'

‘She died because she didn't want to live. Without love.'

‘Love? I don't read love stories, Steiner.'

‘But you love your money, don't you?'

‘No. Jones will tell you tonight how I gave most of it away.'

‘What are you going to live for now, Fischer?' I asked. ‘I don't think any of your friends will come back.'

Doctor Fischer said, ‘Are you so sure that I want to live? Do you want to live? You didn't seem to when you took those crackers. Does what's-his-name Steiner want to live? Yes, perhaps you both do. Perhaps when it comes to the point I have an inclination to live too. Or what am I doing standing here?'

‘You had your fun tonight anyway,' I said.

‘Yes. It was better than nothing. Nothing is a bit frightening, Jones.'

‘It was a strange revenge you took,' I said.

‘What revenge?'

‘All because one woman despised you, you had to despise all the world.'

‘She didn't despise me. Perhaps she hated me. No one will ever be able to despise me, Jones.'

‘Except yourself.'

‘Yes – I remember now that was what you said.'

‘It's true, isn't it?'

He said, ‘It was a disease I caught when you came into my life, Steiner. I should have told Kips to double your salary and I could have presented Anna with all the Mozart records she wanted. I could have bought you and her, like I bought all the others – except you, Jones. It's too late now to buy you. What
is
the time?'

‘Past midnight,' I said.

‘Time to sleep.'

He stood a moment in thought and then he set off, but not in the direction of the house. He continued walking slowly along the lawn by the lakeside, until he was out of sight and sound in the silence of the snow. Even the waters of the lake didn't break the silence: there was no tide to lap on the shore below us.

‘Poor man,' Steiner said.

‘You are very charitable, Mr Steiner. I've never hated a man more.'

‘You hate him and I suppose I hate him too. But hate – it isn't important. Hate isn't contagious. It doesn't spread. One can hate one man and leave it there. But when you begin to despise like Doctor Fischer, you end by despising all the world.'

‘I wish you had done what you planned and spat in his face.'

‘I couldn't. You see – when it came to the point – I pitied him.'

How I wished Fischer had been there to hear how he was pitied by Mr Steiner.

‘It's too cold standing around,' I said, ‘we'll catch our death . . .' But wasn't that, I thought, what I wanted to do? If I stayed long enough. A sharp sound tore the thought in two.

‘What was that?' Steiner said. ‘A car back-firing?'

‘We are too far from the road for that.'

We only had to walk a hundred yards before we came on Doctor Fischer's body. The revolver which he must have carried in his pocket lay beside his head. The snow was already absorbing the blood. I put out my hand to take the gun – it might, I thought, serve my turn too – but Mr Steiner stopped me. ‘Leave that to the police,' he said. I looked at the body and it had no more significance than a dead dog. This, I thought, was the bit of rubbish I had once compared in my mind with Jehovah and Satan.

17

The fact that I have written this narrative tells well enough that, unlike Doctor Fischer, I never found the courage necessary to kill myself; that night I hadn't needed courage, for I had a sufficiency of despair, but since the inquest demonstrated that the revolver had contained only one charge, my despair would not have served me even if Mr Steiner had not taken possession of the weapon. Courage is sapped by day-to-day mind-dulling routine, and despair deepens so much every day one lives, that death seems in the end to lose its point. I had felt Anna-Luise close to me when I held the whisky in my hand and again when I pulled the cracker with my teeth, but now I had lost all hope of ever seeing her in any future. Only if I had believed in a God could I have dreamt that the two of us would ever have that
jour le plus long
. It was as though my small half-belief had somehow shrivelled with the sight of Doctor Fischer's body. Evil was as dead as a dog and why should goodness have more immortality than evil? There was no longer any reason to follow Anna-Luise if it was only into nothingness. As long as I lived I could at least remember her. I had two snapshots of her and a note in her hand written to make an appointment before we lived together; there was the chair which she used to sit in, and the kitchen where she had jangled the plates before we bought the machine. All these were like the relics of bone they keep in Roman Catholic churches. Once as I boiled myself an egg for my supper, I heard myself repeating a line which I had heard spoken by a priest at the midnight Mass at Saint Maurice: ‘As often as you do these things you shall do them in memory of me.' Death was no longer an answer – it was an irrelevance.

Sometimes I have a cup of coffee with Mr Steiner – he isn't a drinking man. He talks of Anna-Luise's mother and I don't interrupt him. I let him ramble on and I think of Anna-Luise. Our enemy is dead and our hate has died with him, and we are left with our two very different memories of love. The Toads still live in Geneva and I go to that city as seldom as I can. Once near the station I saw Belmont, but we didn't speak. I have passed Mr Kips several times too, but he doesn't see me with his gaze fixed on the pavement, and the only time I encountered Deane he was far too drunk to notice me. Only Mrs Montgomery once troubled me in Geneva, calling cheerfully from the doorway of a jeweller's shop, ‘Why, if it isn't Mr Smith,' but I pretended not to hear and hurried on to meet an Argentinian client.

THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE

The famous American publisher Alfred A. Knopf (1892–1984) founded Vintage Books in the United States in 1954 as a paperback home for the authors published by his company. Vintage was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 and works independently from the American imprint although both are part of the international publishing group, Random House.

Vintage in the United Kingdom was initially created to publish paperback editions of books acquired by the prestigious hardback imprints in the Random House Group such as Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Hutchinson and later William Heinemann, Secker & Warburg and The Harvill Press. There are many Booker and Nobel Prize-winning authors on the Vintage list and the imprint publishes a huge variety of fiction and non-fiction. Over the years Vintage has expanded and the list now includes great authors of the past – who are published under the Vintage Classics imprint – as well as many of the most influential authors of the present.

For a full list of the books Vintage publishes, please visit our website

For book details and other information about the classic authors we publish, please visit the Vintage Classics website